International Phenomenological Society

Scheler's Theory of Intersubjectivity and the General Thesis of the Alter Ego
Author(s): Alfred Schuetz
Reviewed work(s):
Source: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 2, No. 3 (Mar., 1942), pp. 323-347
Published by: International Phenomenological Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2103164 .
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SCHELER'S THEORY OF INTERSUBI EiTI VIT- A-ND THE
GENERAL THESIS OF THE ALITER EG(-)

1. SCHELER 'S CONCEPT OF MIAN

In order to make fully understandable Scheler's theory of inter-

subjectivity and its role within his philosophical thought wvemust glance
at his concept of a philosophical anthropology. It is outlined in an essay
called "The Place of Man in the Cosmos," 1 one of the latest papers
published in his lifetime, to serve as a prelude to two never finished
volumes on anthropology and metaphysics. Here Scheler develops a
scheme of five interrelated levels of psychical existence in the world.
(i) The lowest one is characterizedby an emotional inipjiilstc2 without
consciousness, without even sensations and perceptions. This kind of
psychical existence is not directed towards a goal although it indis-
putably shows certain tendencies. The vegetative life of the plant takes
place exclusively on this level, but the human being also participates in
it, e. g., by the rhythm between sleep and waking. In this sense sleep is
the vegetative state of man. (2) The second form of psychical existence
is that of instinctive life.3 Instinctive behavior is meaningful as it is
oriented to an end; it is performed rhythmically; it does not serve the
individual but the species; it is innate and hereditary; it is independent
of the number of attempts which have to be made in order to succeed,
and therefore it is, so to speak, ready-made from the beginning. This
level is characteristic of the lower animals. It can be defined as a unitv
of pre-knowledge and action, as there is no more knowledge at hand
than is necessary foi the performance of the next step. By its directed-
ness towards specific elements of the environment it is distinguished
from the level of emotional impulse; by its chief function of "creative
dissociation" (that is, by singling specific sensations and perceptions
out of diffuse complexes of experiences) it is separated from the next
level, namely, (3) the level of associative memory.4 This is the level of
'conditioned reflexes." To it corresponds a behavior tested in an in-
creasing number of attempts performed according to the principle of
success and failure, the faculty of forming habits and traditions, and
other forms of associative regularities as imitation and learning - all
this, however. by half-unconscious tradition and not by spontaneous
recollection. (4) The fourth level is that of practical initelligenice.5 An

1. Die Stellng des Mlenschlen in KoS2os, Darmstadt. 1928.

2. L.c., pp. 16 ff.
3. L.c., pp. 24 ff.
4. L.c., pp. 31 if;
5. L. c., pp. 39 ff.
324 PHILOSOPHY A-ND PHENOMIEN-OLOGICAi RESEARCH

animal behaves intelligently if it acts spontaneously and appropriately

in new situations, and this independently of the number of previous
attempts to solve a certain task impulsively. Such a behavior presup-
poses insight into the interconnectedness of the environment and its
elements and therefore a productive (not merely a reproductive) think-
ing which is capable of anticipating a state of affairs never before e:,x-
perienced and of grasping relations like "similar," "analogous," "means
for obtaining something," "cause of something," etc. The well-known
researches of Prof. NV.Koehler" have proved that higher mammals are
capable of genuine intelligent acts in the indicated sense.
But if mammals are intelligent, does another than gradual differ-
ence exist between man and animal? Scheler rejects both prevailing
schools of thought, the one which reserves intelligent acts exclusively
to human beings as well as the so-called "lionio-faber-theory" which
reduces the differences between man and animal to one of degree. Of
course, in so far as human nature pertains to the sphere of vitality, inl
so far as its psychical life shows impulses, instincts, associative memory,
intelligence and choice, it participates in all the realms of organic life
thus far enumerated. And in so far, but only in so far, as human nature
shows the same structure as the nature of other living beings it is
accessible to experimental psychology.7 (5) But mialnis also something
else.8 The principle which constitutes the specific exceptional position
of man within the cosmos is not derived fromnthe evolution of life; it
stands rather over against the life and its manifestations. The old Greek
philosophers acknowledged the existence of this principle and called it
"logos" or Reason. But Scheler prefers the term "Geist" (Mind) which
includes not only "reason," and this means the faculty of thinking in
ideas, but also the power of intuitive perception of essences (Wesenis-
gehaltenz) and certain classes of volitive and emotional acts such as
those of kindness, love, repentance, awe, etc. The center of activity,
correlated to the level of "Minid,"is called by Scheler "Person" and has
to be distinguished front the other centers of vitality which he calls
"psychical centers."
The realmnlof the Mind is the realm of freedom: freedom from
dependence on the organic life, flee(dom01fromlIthe bondage of impulses.

6. W. Koehler, Intelligenzpruefnngen tin Aienschenaflen, Abhandlungen de- preulss-

ischen Akademie dc-i llissenschaften, andl T/he lentality of Apes, 1925.
7. Cf. the excellent criticism of the limits of elxperimental methods in psychology bv
Piof. GordIon W. Allport in his p)residential a(l(lrcss at the Forty-seventh Annual Meeting of
the American Psychological Assciation, I'39--The Psychologist's Frame of Reference,"
Psychological Bulletin, vol. XXXVII, p)). 1-2(6, cspcciallv p. 14 ff. Also Prof. R. S. Woo(d-
worth, 'Successes an(l Failures of Exp)erimental Psychology," Science, vol. XCIII, pp. 265
ff., especially ). 269 f.
8. Scheler, Stellong des Ilenscolen, pp. 44 if.
 SCHELER'STHIJEORY
OF INTERSUBJECTIVITV 325

freedom also from an environment in which the animal is immersed.

Whereas the animal experiences its environment as a system of centers
of resistances and reactions whose structure it carries along as the snail
does its shell wherever it moves, the Mind and therefore the Person has
the faculty of transforming those environmental centers of resistance
into "objects" and the closed "environment" itself into the open "world."
Unlike the animal, man may also objectify his owln physical and psychi-
cal experiences. The animal hears and sees but without knowing that
it does so and it experiences even its impulses but just as attractions and
repulsions emanating from things in its environment. TIhlus,the animal
has consciousness, but not self-consciousness; it is not master of itself.
Man, however, is the only being which is able to be a Self and to place
itself not only above the world but even above itself. He can do so,
because he is not only a soul (an irna) but a Personl-"persona cogitans"
in the sense of Kant's doctrine of the transcendental apperception, the
"cogitare" being the condition of all possible inner and outer experience
and therefore of all objects of experience. But this means also that
Mind and its correlate, Person, is principally not objectifiable. Mind is
pure actuality and Person is nothing else than a self-constituted integra-
tion of acts. Moreover, even other people are not objectifiable in so far
as their Persons are in question. Being merely the locus of acts the
totality of which co-determines each single act, a Person is accessible
only for another Person by co-achievingythese acts, by thinking with,
feeling with, willing with the other.10
S CONCEPTOF PERSON
11. SCTIELER
In a previous book"1 Scheler had worked out the concept of the
Person, which is a basic one for all his philosophizing. He distinguishes
there sharply between the 1 and the Person. The experienced I
(Erlebutis-ich) is under any aspect an object of our thought. It is
given to our inner experience as a datum from which psychology and
even descriptive psychology must abstract in order to operate with ex-
periences or thoughts as such without referring to the thinker. On the

9. In his book, Fornialismulsin der Ethie, p. 388 ff., Scheler has criticized Kant's
concept of the identity of the objects. If the object were nothing else than what can be
identified by an I, the I too would be an object-and that, Scheler thinks, is indeed the
case. For Kant, however, the I must not be an object-as it is the condition of all objects.
But Kant's underlying tenet that the existence of the world depends on the possibility of its
being experienced by an I is according to Scheler merely the consequence of Kant's "trans-
cendental qualms" that things in themselves, once left alone, might behave quite otherwise
if we do not bind them from the beginning by the laws of our experience.
10. Stellung des Menschen, p. 58 ff.
11. Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materielle Wertethik. Netter Versuch der
Grundlegung des ethischen Personalismus.First published in vol. I and II of lahrbuch flier
Philosophie und phaenomenologische Forschung, 1913 and 1916; second edition, 1921; cf.
especially chapter VI.
326 PH ILOSOPHY AND PH-NO\IENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

other hand, an act can never be objectified. It is never "given" to our

outer or inner experience and can only be experienced by performing it.
And much less can the correlate of the different forms and categories of
acts, the Person, be considered as an object. The Person manifests hini-
self exclusively by performing the acts in which he lives and by which
he experiences himself. Or as far as other Persons are concerned, they
can be experienced by co-performance, pre-performance or re-perform-
ance of the other Persons' acts, but all this without objectifying the
Person.'12 To avoid misunderstanding, says Scheler, a distinction must
be made between acts belonging to the Person and mere "functions"
belonging to the I as seeing. hearing, tasting, bodily feelings, all kinds
of attention, etc. The functions presuppose a body, they are correlated
to the environment, they have their origin within the I, they are psychi-
cal. Acts, however, are not psychical in this sense; they do not neces-
sarily presuppose a body, but they are psychophysically indifferent;l
their correlate is not the environment, but the world. To be sure, this
world is an individual world correlated to an individual Person. But the
Person is never a part of this world and the term "correlated" does not
mean anything else than that the individual Person experiences himself
within his individual world.1
The term "I," however, always implies, according to Scheler. a
reference to its double antithesis: the outer world on the one hand and
the "'Thou"on the other. The term "Person" is free from such conno-
tations. God mav be a Person but not an I as he neither has a "thou"
nor an outer world. A Person acts, takes a walk, for example. This
cannot be done by an I. Language tolerates the use of the phrase "I
amnacting, I amwalkingg" But this "I" is not the name for the "Self"
as an experience of my psychical life, rather an "occasional" expression,
whose meaning changes with the man who actually uses it; it marks
merely.the linguistic form of addressing the "first person" as the gram-
marians call it. If I say: "I am perceiving myself," then the "I" does
not mean the psychical I, but merely designates the speaker; and the
"myself" does not mean "my Self," but leaves open the question whether
"I"perceive the "me" by outer or inner perception. On the other hand,

12. Fownialistnti, p. 401 f. Nicolas Berdvaev makes a similar distinction between

"Ego and Personality" in his Solitude anld Society, p. 159 ff. From a quite different angle
Neo-Thomlists distinguishh "indlividualits" as a part from "personality" as a whole (cf. e. g.,
Jaques Maritain: Dto RLgir'nc tenipoiel et de la liberie). It is not possible to enter here into
a discussion of G. H. Meal's very interesting interpretation r)f the problem in Mlind, Self
and Society and Thie Philosophy of Action as his ipl)roach to it is a quite different one. The
student of Mead will, however, kind that certain special views of Mead and Scheler converge.
13. Here, as generally in his theory of tne Person, Schelcr's thought converges with
certain aspects of William Stern's personalistic psycholog-y. Stcrn, too, characterizes the
being of the personalities as "iinetal-ps-cho-pthvsical." (Per0son tnd Sach/e).
14. Ethik, pp. 403, 408-410.
 SCHELER'S THEORY OF INTERSUBJECTIVITY 327

if I say: "I perceive my Self," the I means the speaker and the "my
Self" means the psychical Self as an object of inner perception. A
Person, therefore, might just as well take a walk as perceive his Self,
e.g., if this Person makes psychological observations. But the psychical
Self, which the Person perceives in such a case, can just as little "per-
ceive" as it can walk or act. A Person, on the other hand, may perceive
his Self, his body, his outer world, but it is not possible to render a
Person the object of (his own or an other Person's) perceiving acts.'4
The Person does not exist, except in the performance of his acts. Any
attempt to objectify the Person or his acts-be this objectifying a per-
ceiving, thinking, recollecting, expecting-transforms his existence into
a transcendental idea.16 Of course, acts can be "given" either in their
naive performance or in reflection. But this means simply that a reflec-
tive knowledge accompanies the act without rendering it an object.
Grasping an act as an object by another reflective act is therefore
impossible.17
The account of Scheler's theory of the I would be incomplete with-
out a short reference to the specific experiences a man has of his body.
Although the concept "human body" already refers to a human being
to which this body belongs, either as his own body or as the body of
another man, this does not mean that it is the reference of the human
body to a Self which makes the experience of the body possible. And
on the other hand, says Scheler, it would be wrong to assume that a
man has necessarily to refer first to his experiences of his own Self and
then to the experience of his own body, if he wants to comprehend
another Self or another body.18
Space does not permit us a criticism of this basic theory of Scheler,
although the inconsistency of several of the above reproduced theses is
obvious. We have presented his ideas just for the purpose of making
clear his more rounded doctrine of the understanding of the alter ego.
As we shall there meet again some of Scheler's principle tenets, wNre
shall later have the opportunity to deal with them.

III. SCHELER S THEORY OF INTERSUBJECTIVITY

(a) The Problems Involved

As a result of his studies in the theory of sympathy,19 Scheler

15. Ethik, pp. 404 ff.

16. Ethik, p. 405.
17. Ethik, pp. 388, 401, 405.
18. Ethik, pp. 415-440, especially p. 427.
19. First published in 1913 under the title, Phaenomenologie der Sympathiegeflie/hle,
second rewritten-edition, 1923, under the title, Weseii und Formen der Sympathie. We
refer to this second edition.
328 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

passes in review the contributions of contemporary psychologists and

philosophers to the solution of the problem of intersubjectivity and
wonders why the results are so unsatisfactory. He comes to the conclu-
sion that the failure of all efforts to deal with this topic has been caused
by the lack of clear distinctions between the different problems involved
and by neglect of the sequence in which these problems have to be
raised. His first task, therefore, is to establish a catalogue of questions
to be solved. There are six questions he enumerates :20
(I) Is the relation between man and fellow-men just a factual
one or does the concept of man already presuppose society and this
quite independently of the factual existence of a concrete ego within a
concrete social world (ontological problem) ?
(2) (a) By what reason am I, e. g., the writer of these lines,
wvell-foundedin my belief that other people and their conscious life do
really exist? (b) Furthermore, how is the reality of another's con-
sciousness accessible to me (logico-epistemological problem) ?
(3) Which individual experiences have already to be presupposed
and which activities of the consciousness must be considered as already
performed, before knowledge about an alter ego might emerge at all
(problems of constitution) ? For instance: does knowledge about other
people's consciousness presuppose self-consciousness? Does it presup-
pose knowledge of Nature in the meaning of a real outer world? Does
knowledge of other people's psychical and mental life presuppose an
apperception of the other's body and its interpretation as a field of
expression? and so on. Questions of this order,21 however, cannot be
answered by solutions which are valid only for the attitudes and experi-
ences of a well-educated adult living in the Occidental civilization of
our time. They have to be valid independently of those accidental fac-
tors. They are not problems of an empirical but of a transcenldenital
psychology.
(4) The empirical psychological problems of understanding other
people are of a quite different kind. Any sort of empirical psychology
already presupposes iot only that fellow-men do really exist, but also
that the organization of their consciousness enables them to retain their
perceptions, outer and inner experiences, sensations, feelings, etc., in
memory; furthermore, that they can communicate those experiences

20. Sympathie, pp. 248-269.

21. Scheler has answered some of these questions in his later writings in a way which
differs partially from his opinions as presented in this paper. Cf., e. g., "Probleme einer
Soziologie des Wissens" in his book, Die Wissensformen rnd die Gesellschaft, 1926, pp.
48-54.
 SCHELER'STHEORY OF INTERSUBJECTIVITY 329

by statements; and that these statements are understandable.22 And

in so far as "empirical psychology" may be taken as equivalent to "ex-
perimental psychology" it presupposes furthermore the objectifiability
of the psychical as such and includes the ill-founded supposition that
the same psychical events may recur in a multitude of subjects and may
be reproduced by experiments. But the Person and his acts cannot be
objectified and only that part of human existence which pertains to
levels below the realm of mind and freedom are accessible to experi-
ments. For the Person and his manifestations are not open to percep-
tion in the same sense as are the objects of nature. It is within the free
will of the Person to disclose or conceal his acts or to keep silent, and
this is quite another thing than merely not speaking. Nature cannot
conceal itself and therefore neither can man, in so far as his animate
existence belongs to Nature. It is necessarily open to discovery and the
pure acts of animate existence manifest themselves-at least in prin-
ciple-in the somatico-physiological events correlated to them.
(5) Metaphysical problems involved in the theory of the alter ego.
There is a certain unity of style between basic metaphysical assump-
tions and the logico-epistemological approach to the problem of inter-
subjectivity. The so-called "theory of inference," for example, is only
compatible with a very definite metaphysical standpoint, namely, the
Cartesian assumption of two separate substances, the physical and the
psychical, influencing one another; it would be incompatible, however,
with the metaphysical assumption of an epiphenomenological parallelism.
(6) Value problems connected with the existence of alter-egos.
There is no doubt that certain moral acts such as those of love, respon-
sibility, duty, gratitude refer by their nature to the existence of alter-
egos. Scheler calls them "essentially social acts" ("Wesenssoziale
Akte") because they cannot be construed as pre-social acts on which
sociality only later supervenes. For Scheler these acts in particular
constitute the proof for his theory that in each individual sociality is
always present and that not only is the human individual a part of
society but that society is also an integral part of the individual. Let
us examine this theory more closely.
According to Scheler,22 the belief in the existence of alter egos is
not based on acts of theoretical cognition. A person-like being, capable
of all kinds of emotional acts like love, hate, will, etc., but incapable of
theoretical acts-i. e., objectifying cognitions-would not at all lack
any evidence of the existence of others. The "essentially social feelings"

22. An excellent presentation of the problems of empirical psychology related to

"understanding personality" may be found in Prof. Gordon W. Allport's book, Personality,
a Psychological lterpietation, 1937, Part V, pp. 499-549.
23. Sympathie, pp. 269-273: Et/zik.
330 RESEARCII
PHILOSOPHYAND PHE.NOMIENOLOGICAL

alone are sufficient to establish the scheme of reference of society as an

ever-present element of his consciousness. There is no Robinson Crusoe
conceivable in the theory of mind who had not from the beginning some
kind of knowledge of the existence of a community of human beings to
which he belongs. There never has been a radical solipsist who said:
"There are no communities of human beings and I do not belong to any
of them. I am alone in the world." All a solipsistic Crusoe might pre-
tend is: "I know that there are communities of human beings in the
world and I know that I pertain to one or several of them. But I do
not know the individuals constituting them, nor do I know the empiri-
cal groups which constitute such a community at all." We have, says
Scheler, to distinguish between the empty knowledge about the exist-
ence of some alter ego and some community as such and the knowledge
of24 one or more concrete fellow-men and social groups. As far as the
latter are concerned the supposition of some philosophers (like Driesch)
is erroneous that all knowledge of a concrete other person is based on
the perception of his bodily movements. This is only one of the sources
of my knowledge of others and not at all the most important one. Other
experiences, the knowledge of a system of interpretable signs, for in-
stance, are sufficient for the belief in thie existence of other persons.
(b) Inference and Empathy
But how is it principally possible that our experiences, which are
supposed to be referred to concrete others, lead to the conviction of
their existence? There prevail in the contemporary literature two
theories, the theory of inference or analogy, and the theory of empathy,
which pretend to offer a solution not only for the empirical problem
(cf. above ad 4) but also for the transcendental problem (cf. above ad
3) here involved.25 The theory of inference pretends that we discover
other people's thought by a process of reasoning by analogy, inferring
from the other's "expressive" bodily gestures his state of mind which
is supposed to be analogous to our state of mind (disclosed by inner
experience) if we perform the "same" gesture. The other theory con-
sists in the hypothesis that the ego acquires a belief in the psychical
existence of others by a process of empathy in the manifestations of
the other's body. The followers of the first school of thought praise the
conclusiveness of their hypothesis, which leads in their opinion to well-
founded evidence of the alter ego's existence, whereas the theory of

24. We are borrowing here, in order to present Scheler's thought adequately, the
terms, "knowledge about" and "knowledge of," from W. James' Principles of Psychology,
vol. I, p. 221.
25. Sympathie, pp. 274-280; cf., the fine presentation and the important criticism of
both theories in G. W. Allports Personality, 1.c., pp. 523-533.
 SCHELER'S THEORY OF I NTERSUBJECTIVITY 33I

empathy results only in a blind belief in it. The defenders of the theory
of empathy rejoin that we have also merely a blind belief in the exist-
ence of our past experiences which are just "images" in our memory
and that we even cannot go beyond a blind belief in the existence of
the outer world.
Scheler's criticism of both theories goes in two directions. First
he proves for either theory that it is inconsistent in itself; secondly he
shows that both of them are based on a common fallacy. Scheler's argu-
ments against the theory of inference may be condensed as follows:
(i) Animals, very young children and primitives, who obviously lack
the faculty of inferring by analogy, also have the conviction of the
existence of their fellow-beings and catch expressions of the other's
psychical life. Koehler, Stern Koffka, Levy-Bruhl have moreover
proved that expression is the genuine experience of those beings and
that all learning creates for them a disenchantment with and not a
progressive animation of the world. (2) Except for self-observation in
mirrors, etc., we have knowledge of our bodily gestures by sensations
or motions and positions of our body, whereas other people's gestures
are given to us first of all as optical phenomena having no analogy what-
soever to oiurkinesthetic sensations. Hence, all inference by analogy to
others' gestures already presupposes the psychical existence of the
others and our knowledge even of their experiences. (3) We suppose
also the animate existence of animals like birds and fish whose expres-
sive gestures are entirely different from ours. (4) The theory of infer-
ence conceals the logical fallacy called "quaternio termiinorum." The
only logically correct inference would be that where expressive bodily
gestures exist which are analogous to my owen,mnySelf must exist once
more over there and this would lead to a reduplication of my stream of
thought. It is not understandable howt-avoiding an obvious qutaternzio
ternibnorum-an other Self, different from my owvn,should be posited
by such a conclusion.
The theory of empathy, on the other hand, is not an explanation
of the origin of our knowledge of others, but just a hypothesis which
explains the reason of our belief in the other's existence. It would be a
pure accident if the other's body to which we ascribe our empathetic
feelings were really animated. For, interpretation of the other's ges-
ture as expression can only be the consequence of and not the proof
for his existence. Furthermore, this theory, too, suffers from the same
qilaterniio terninlorimni.as the theory of inference and wNouldlead at best
to the assumption that my own Self exists twice or several times but
not that another Self does exist.
But all this criticism does not hit the basic fallacy of both hypothe-
332 PHILOSOPHY AN-D PHENOMIENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

ses, namely, the suppositions (i) that the first thing given to each of us
is his own Self and (2) that the first thing we can grasp of another
human being is the appearance of his body, together with its move-
ment and gestures. Both theories assume as self-evident that these
statements are true and that only on this conviction do we base our
belief in the existence of alter egos. But in doing so both theories
underestimate the difficulties of self-perception and overestimate the
difficulties in perceiving other people's thought.
The first statement involves, according to Scheler,26 the idea that
anybody can only think his own thoughts, feel his own feelings, etc.,
and that this fact constitutes the individual substratum "Self" for him.
But the only thing self-evident is the tautology that if such a substratum
were once supposed, all thoughts and feelings thought and felt by this
"Self" would pertain to this substratum. On the other hand, it is cer-
tain that we think our own thought, as well as other people's thought,
feel also other people's feelings, accept or reject other people's will.
There are even situations where we cannot distinguish whether a
thought is ours or not. Then an experience is given to us without any
mark indicative of the individual stream of consciousness to which it
belongs. This fact Scheler considers as very important. To be sure, any
experience pertains to a Self, and this Self is necessarily an individual
Self which is present in any of its experiences and not just constituted
through the interconnectedness of those experiences. But to which indi-
vidual Self an experience may belong, whether it be our own or an-
other's experience, is not necessarily and genuinely determined by the
emerging experience itself. On the contrary, a stream of experiences
flows along, indifferent in respect to the distinction between Mine and
Thine, which contains intermingled and undifferentiated my own and
others' experiences. W0 withinthis stream eddies gradually constitute
themselves which attract more and more of the stream's elements and
are attributed by and by to different individuals. Scheler27goes even a
step further. Basing his conclusions on the results of modern child-
psychology, which reveal that the discovery of the child's own indivi-
duality is a relatively late one, he maintains that man lives from the
beginning rather "in" other people's experiences than in his individual
sphere. 28

26. Sympathiie,pp. 281-287.

27. Sympathie, p. 285.
28. In his E2ih4,, p. 543 ff.. he distinguishes even within any "finite Person" two
elements, namely, an "individual Person" (Einzelperson) and a "total Person" (Gesarnit-
person), the former being constituted by his individual acts, the latter by his social acts.
Both are aspects of one concrete total of Person and World. This theory recalls W. James'
interpretationof the Social Self (Principles of Psychology, vol. I, p. 293 ff.) and its develop-
ment by G. H. Mead.
 SCHELER'STHEORY OF INTERSUBJECTIVITY 333

(c) Scheler's Perceptional Theory of the Alter Ego

But how can inner experience remain undetermined? Is inner
experience not ipso facto self-experience? And is it possible to catch
the alter ego and its stream of thought by inner experience? Scheler
thinks29 that the traditional identification of inner experience (inner
perception) and self-experience is ill-founded. On the one hand I may
perceive myself-as I may perceive anybody else-by outer perception,
too. A glance in the mirror will prove this. On the other hand, I may
seize by inner perception other people's experiences as I perceive my
present and past experiences. Of course, the inner perception of other
people's experiences requires a certain set of conditions, among them
that my owvn body undergoes certain influences emanating from the
other's body. For instance, my ear has to be affected by the sound
waves of words spoken by the other if I am to understand what he says.
But these conditions do not determine the act of my perceiving as such:
they are just the consequence of the fact that to any act of possible
inner perception belongs an act of a possible outer perception, which in
turn refers to an outer object affecting the senses. Only the specific
content of my perception of other people's thought is therefore con-
ditioned by the processes which happen between my and the other's
body. This, however, has nothing to do with the principle that I may
perceive other people's experience by inner perception. Exactly as our
inner perception embraces not only our present state of mind but also
the whole past of our stream of thought, it embraces also as a possibility
the whole realm of minds as an undifferentiated stream of experiences.
And not otherwise than we perceive our present self as emergent from
the background of all our past life do we also become aware of our self
as standing out against the background of a (more or less indistinctly
felt) all-embracing consciousness which contains my experiences as well
as the experiences of all the other minds. Both time-honored metaphysi-
cal theories on the relations between mind and body-the theory of the
reciprocal influence of two substances as well as the so-called psycho-
physical parallelism - exclude even the possibility of perceiving the
other's experiences. Both confine man in a kind of psychical jail where
he has to wait and see what the metaphysical nexus of causality might
magically project on its walls. But both theories misinterpret the role
of the body as the great. selector and analyst for the contents of all our
outer and inner perceptions.
This concept of the role of the body in the processes of experi-
encing other people's thought leads Scheler30 to the conclusion that the

29. Sympathie, pp. 284-293.

30. Sympathlie,p. 295 ff.
334 RESEARCH
PHILOSOPHYAND PHENOIMENOLOGICAL

only category of the other's experiences which cannot be caught by

direct perception is the other's experiences of his body, its organs, and
of the sensuous feelings attached to them; and it is exactly these bodily
feelings which constitute the separation between man and fellow-man.
Conversely, as far as man lives only in his bodily feelings he does not
find any approach to the life of the alter ego. Only if he elevates him-
self as a Person above his pure vegetative life does he gain experience
of the other.
But what else shall we perceive of the other than its body and its
gestures ? Scheler31 thinks that we certainly perceive in the other's
smile his joy, in his tears his suffering, in his blushing his shame, in
his joined hands his praying, in the sounds of his xvords his thought-
all this without empathy and without any inference by analogy. WVe
start reasoning only if we feel induced to distrust our perceptions of
the other's experiences-as, e.g., if we feel we have misunderstood
him or if we discover that we have to deal with an insane individual.
But even those "inferences" are based on perceptions of the other which
are rather complicated. In looking at him I not only perceive his eyes,
but also that he looks at me, and even that he does so as if he would
prevent my knowing that he looks at me. If we really ask what the
object of our perception of the other is, we have to answer that we
perceive neither the other's body nor his Soul or Self or Ego, but a
totality, undivided into objects of outer and inner experiences. The
phenomena arising out of this unity are psycho-physically indifferent.
They might be analyzed as color qualities, form-units, units of move-
ments, or changes in the position of his bodily organs. But by no worse
reasoning might they be interpreted as "expressions" of the other's
thought which cannot be broken down into parts of expressive charac-
ter, but show the structure of a unit (for instance, a physiognomical
unit).
This, in outline, is Scheler's own theory of understanding the
other. He calls it32 "WRahrnehmungstheorie des fremden Ich" (percep-
tional theory of the alter ego). Its interrelation with Scheler's anthro-
pology and its concept of the person is obvious: as far as man remains
entangled in his bodily feelings he cannot find an approach to the
other's life. Nobody can seize the other's bodily feelings. Only as a
Person does he find access to the other Persons' streams of thought.
But the Person is not the I. The Person and his acts can never be
objectified. It is the I which always is objectifiable. And as no inten-
tional reflections upon the Person and his acts are possible, other Per-

31. Sympathie, p. 301 ff.

32. Sympathie, p. 253.
 SCHELER'S THEORY OF INTERSUBJECTIVITY 335

sons' acts can be seized only by co-performing, pre-performing and re-

performing them.
But this reference to Scheler's other theories already reveals a
certain inconsistency which is not fully explicable by the fact that
Scheler partially worked out these theories later in his philosophical
development without revising his perceptional theory of the alter ego
in his published writings. The following observations try to explain
the reasons for this fact.
IV. CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS

(a) Intersubjectivity as a Transcendental Problem

One of Scheler's deepest insights is the distinction between the
different levels on which the problem of the alter ego has to be dealt
with. Unfortunately, it seems that in constructing his own theory, he
forgets to adhere to the distinction discovered by himself. To the
theories of inference and empathy he objects first of all that they pre-
tend not only to be valid for the empirical psychological level but also
to explain our belief in the existence of alter egos and hence to offer a
solution of the transcendental constitutional problems here involved.
According to his well-founded criticism, these theories fail in attaining
at least the latter goal. That is why Scheler designs his own percep-
tional theory. But what is its contribution to the solution of the trans-
cendental problem? The hypothesis that there exists a stream of experi-
ences, indifferent in respect to the distinction between mine and thine,
which contains our own experiences as well as the experiences of all
other minds. Consequently, the sphere of the "Wie" is pregiven to the
sphere of the I; the sphere of the Self emerges relatively late from the
background of an all-embracing,consciousness. However, he supports
this theory not by analyses within the transcendental sphere, but by
references to empirical facts taken from the psychology of children
and primitives.
As a metaphysical hypothesis Scheler's theory is neither better nor
worse than other metaphysical hypotheses on this topic. Incidentally,
the idea of a suprapersonal consciousness has many ancestors in meta-
physics. Most heterogeneous thinkers have formed such a basic assump-
tion. Hegel, Bergson, the founders of "psychical research," certain
German sociologists who try to combine Marx and Kant33 are among
them. But it is hard to see why Scheler's assumption should be of
greater help for the solution of the problem of the alter ego than, for
instance, Leibnitz's monadology. For the problem of transcendental

33. For instance, Max Adler, Kant and Mfarx.

336 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

phenomenology as a science founded on accurate analysis of the tran-

scendental field34 Scheler's hypothesis does not offer the desired solution.
To be sure, it must be frankly admitted that the problem of the
alter ego is the real crux of any transcendental philosophy. Husserl,35
e. g., sees clearly the eminent danger of solipsism as the consequence
of the transcendental reduction. He tries courageously to "light up this
dark corner, feared only by children in philosophy because the specter
of solipsism haunts it" and offers a solution of the alter ego problem
in the fifth of his Meditations Cartesiemines36- unfortunately, without
succeeding in eliminating the existent difficulties. Having performed
the transcendental reduction and analyzed the constitutional problems
of the consciousness built up by the activities of the transcendental sub-
jectivity, he singles out within the transcendental field what he calls
"my own peculiar sphere" by eliminating all the constitutive activities
which are immediately or mediately related to the subjectivity of others.
This is done by abstracting from all the "meanings" referring to others
and consequently by withdrawing from surrounding Nature its charac-
ter of intersubjectivity. Nature is then no longer common to us all.
What remains is strictly my private world in the most radical sense.
Within this my own peculiar sphere, however, certain objects emerge
which by "passive synthesis" called "Pairing" (accovplement) or "coup-
ling" are interpreted as analogous to my own body and are therefore
apperceived as other people's bodies.37 Furthermore, I interpret in the
same manner the other's bodily movements as gestures and their con-
cordant behavior as an expression of his psychical life. In this way the
other is constituted within my monad as an Ego that is not "I myself"
but a second, an Alter Ego.
There are several difficulties here. First, it is hard to understand
how the abstraction from all meanings referring to others could be
performed in the required radical manner in order to isolate my own
peculiar sphere, as it is exactly the non-reference to the other which
constitutes the line of demarcation of the sphere of what is peculiar to
my own concrete transcendental ego. Hence, some meaning related to
others must necessarily subsist in the very criterion of non-reference to

34. Edmund Husserl, Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft.

35. Husserl, Formale uind TranscendentaleLogik, p. 210.
36. Meditations Cartesiennes,vol. V, especially ??44-55.
37. This "pairing" is, according to Husserl, in no sense an inference by analogy. It
is rather a form of passive synthesis, by which, as in the process of association, an actual
experience refers back to another experience which does not attain actual presence, but is
merely "appresented." Thus, both data, the presented and the appresented one which it
indicates, are constituted as a pair in a unity of similarity. It is probable that the unpub-
lished manuscripts of Husserl contain more extended descriptions of the process so
characterized.
 SCHELER'S 'JTHEORY OF IN-TERSUBJ ECTIVITY 337

others. Secondly, the processes of passive synthesis called by Husserl

"Pairing" and sometimes even empathy seem to carry along some of the
fallacies criticized so strikingly by Scheler. Thirdly, a special difficulty
arises from the general conception of the transcendental reduction. This
reduction has left nothing but the unified stream of my consciousness.
This stream is, so to speak, closed; open only for mv inner experience
and my reflective glance-a monad without a window. On the other
hand, this stream of consciousness refers intentionally to nmvlife-world
which, as "appearance," has been kept intact with its full content within
the transcendental reduction, although 1 have suspended belief in its
real existence. In the natural attitude I know that this life world is
not my private world but from the beginning an intersubjective one
common to us all. Thus I have also knowledge of others and their inner
life, and this knowledge cannot be given up for lost by performing the
phenomenological reduction. The fact that Husserl feels induced to
apply within the reduced sphere the device of abstracting from the
meaning of "others" proves this statement rather than refutes it. Of
course, all the knowledge acquired within the life-world has to be re-
stated after the reduction in terms of the transcendental sphere before
the question how such knowledge might be constituted by the activities
of my transcendental subjectivity can be raised. The re-statement of the
concept of others in terms of the transcendental sphere reveals that the
others also are monads without windows, each of them being capable of
performing the transcendental reduction and of keeping as intact as 1
have all the intentional life of their stream of consciousness directed to
the same common life-world (although put in brackets). Hence, the
others, too, would have their transcendental subjectivity. There would
exist, consequently, a cosmos of monads, and that indeed is the outcome
of Husserl's fifth Meditations Cartesiennes. But it must be earnestly
asked whether the transcendental Ego in Husserl's concept is not essen-
tially what Latin grammarians call a "singular tantum," that is, a term
incapable of being put into the plural. Even more, it is in no way estab-
lished whether the existence of others is a problem of the transcendental
sphere at all, i. e., whether the problem of intersubjectivity does exist
between transcendental egos (Husserl) or Persons (Scheler) ; or
whether intersubjectivity and therefore sociality does not rather belong
exclusively to the mundane sphere of our life world.
(b) Intersubjectivity as a Mundane Problem
In view of such overwhelming difficulties the following consider-
ations will set aside the transcendental problems and turn to the mun-
dane sphere of our life-world. Our first question is whether within
this sphere Scheler's proposition, that the sphere of the "We" is given
to each of us prior to the sphere of the I, proves true. If we retain the
338 PHILOSOPIHY AND PHENOMAEN\OLOGICAL RESEARCH

natural attitude as men among other men, the existence of others is no

more questionable to us than the existence of an outer world. We are
simply born into a world of others, and as long as we stick to the
natural attitude we have no doubt that intelligent fellow-men do exist.
Only if radical solipsists or behaviorists demand proof of this fact does
it turn out that the existence of intelligent fellow-men is a "soft datum"
and incapable of verification (Russell).38 But in their natural attitude
even those thinkers do not doubt this "soft datum." Otherwise they
could not meet others in congresses where it is reciprocally proved that
the intelligence of the other is a questionable fact. As long as human
beings are not concocted like homunculi in retorts but are born and
brought up by mothers, the sphere of the "We" will be naively pre-
supposed. So far we may agree with Scheler that the sphere of the
"'We"is pregiven to the sphere of the I.
But there is a very earnest objection: obviously only in reference
to "me," namely, to the individual who acts and thinks, do others obtain
thllespecific meaning which 1 designate with the pronoun "we"; and
only in reference to ",us," whose center I am, do others stand out as
"you"; and in reference to you, who refer back to me, third parties
stand out as "they." 3 To be sure, in acting and thinking in daily life,
I am not aware that all these objects of my acts and thoughts which 1
call others and "we" and "vou" and "they" are relative to my Self
and that only my existence within this world as a Self makes this rela-
tionship and relativity possible. I just live along amidst other human
beings which I group under the relations of we and you as I live amidst
objects of the outer world which I group under the relations of left and
right. In this naive attitude I am not aware of myself. I am, as Husserl
says, living in my acts and thoughts, and in doing so, I am exclusively
directed towards the objects of my acts and thoughts. Then my stream
of thought seems to be an anonymous flux. "It thinks," not "I think," is
the formula proposed by WV.James,40 and Dewey 41 even rejects the
term "stream of thought" and wants to speak just of an "ongoing
course of experienced things."
All this is valid, if I live naively in my acts directed towards their
objects. But I may always, as Dewey says in such a pregnant way,

38. B. Russell, Our Knowledge of the External World, 1922, Lecture III, pp.
72 ff.; also R. Carnap, Scheinprobleme der Philosophie.
39. This might be considered as a supplement to Koffka's well-known location of the
Ego: according to Koffka the Ego is that which lies between right and left, between before
and behind, between least and future. But this location could be given in social terms, too.
40. Prhiciples of Psychology, vol. I, p. 224.
41. E.g., recently in his paper: "The Vanishing Subject in the Psychology of James"
(Journal of Philosophy, vol. XXXVII, p. 22).
 SCHELERS THEORY OF INTERSUrIJECTIVITY 339

"stop and think." 4 Still remaining in the natural attitude, and this
means without performing the transcendental reduction, I may always
turn in an act of reflection from the objects of mn acts and thoughts to
my acting and thinking. In doing so I render mynlprevious acts and
thoughts, objects of another, the reflective.thought by which I grasp
them. Then my "Self," which has been hidden as yet by the objects of
my acts and thoughts, emerges. It does not merely enter the field of
my consciousness in order to appear on its horizon or at its center;
rather it alone constitutes this field of consciousness. Consequently,
all the performed acts, thoughts, feelings reveal themselves as orig-
imating in my previous acting, Blyathinking, myv feeling. The whole
stream of consciousness is through and through the stream of my per-
sonal life and my Self is present in any of my experiences.4

42. How We Think, 1910; and Human Nature and Conduct, 1922.
43. A. Gurwitsch in discussing a theory of Paul Sartre has dealt with this problem in
this journal in a paper entitled "A Non-egological Conception of Consciousness" (vol. I,
pp. 325-338). The chief argument of Sartre-Gurwitschagainst the egological theory main-
tained in the present paper runs as follows: as long as we do not adopt the attitude of re-
flection the ego does not appear. By reflection is meant the grasping of an act A by an act
B in order to make the former the object of the latter. The act B, however, in its turn is
not grasped by a third act and made its object. The grasping act itself is experienced with a
non-reflectiveattitude exactly as in the case of an act bearing on some object other than a
mental fact belonging to the same stream of consciousness. To be sure, by an act of reflec-
tion the grasped act may acquire a personal structureand a relation to the ego which it did
not have, before it was grasped. But the grasping act deals with the ego as an object only.
It is the ego of the grasped and not of the grasping act. On the other hand, the grasped act
has been experienced before it was grasped, and although reflectionentails a modification of
the acts grasped by it, this means only that all of the act's structure and components are
disentangled and rendered explicit but that none of them is given rise to by reflection.
Reflection is disclosing, not producing. How, then, may reflection give rise to a new object,
namely, the ego, which did not appear before the act A was grasped? The answer offered
is that the ego appears through rather than in the grasped act. It is the synthetic unity of
certain psychic objects as dispositions, actions and certain qualities such as virtues, faults,
talents, etc. These phychic objects have their support in the ego, which may never be appre-
hended directly but merely in a reflectionas appearing behind the dispositions at the horizon.
The ego exists neither in the acts of consciousness nor behind these acts. It stands to con-
sciousness and. before consciousness: it is the noematic correlate of reflective acts. Hence it
follows that no evidence of the ego is apodictic. It is open to doubt.
It is not possible to enter here into a thorough discussion of Sartre-Gurwitsch'sargu-
ment which seems to me not at all conclusive. If they admit that the grasping act B deals
with the ego at all (although with the ego of the grasped act as an object only and not with
the ego of the grasping act) then this ego is grasped by act B as performing act A (or more
precisely: as having performed act A, since reflection can only refer to the past). If a third
act C grasps the act B and through it the act A, the ego with which act C deals is grasped
as having performed act B as well as act A and it is grasped as the same and identical ego
notwithstanding all the modifications it undergoes in and by the flux of the stream of
experiences in inner time. Furthermore it is not clear why the ego in the reflection may
never be apprehended directly but merely appear behind the dispositions at the horizon.
Even the term "horizon" already refers to an egological consciousness to which alone
"frame," "horizons," "disposition," "act," and other terms used by Sartre and Gurwitsch,
become meaningful. The same becomes valid for the examples quoted by Gurwitsch in order
to illustrate his thesis. If he says that there is no egological moment involved if I see my
friend in adversity and help him and that what is given to mie is just "my-friend-in-need-of-
aid" it must be stated that any single element of the hyphenated term "Imy ," "friencl,"
"need," "aid," already refers to the ego for which alone each of them max'exist.
340 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMIENNOLOGICAL
RESEARCH

Scheler, in drafting his perceptional theory of the alter ego, does

not distinguish between the naive attitude of living in the acts and
thoughts whose objects the others are and the attitude of reflection upon
those acts and thoughts. Probably his supposition that intentional re-
flection upon acts is impossible prevents him from embarking on such
analyses.44 But if we introduce the distinction between the two char-
acterized attitudes the following objections can be made against
Scheler's theory:
(I) The statement that we live rather in others than in our own
individual life becomes true only for the naive attitude in which we
are directing our acts and thoughts towards other people as their object.
(2) There is no such thing as an experience "given" to me that
would not indicate which individual stream of consciousness it belongs
to. As soon as I turn to the stream of experiences, and this means, as
soon as I adopt the reflective attitude, this stream is through and through
the stream of miiyexperiences.
(3) The fact that some of my experiences refer to other people's
thought cannot destroy their character as belonging to my and only my
individual sphere. In thinking the thoughts of another, I think them
as "other people's thoughts thought by me." In suffering with other
people I ami from the beginning directed to "other people's suffering as
reproduced by me." That I might be in doubt whether the origin of one
of my thoughts lies within my stream of thought or someone else's
makes that thought no less mine now: the other's thought, together
with my doubt, is now a content of my experience.
(4) The results of modern studies in the psychology of children
and primitives, purporting to show that children and primitive man
only slowly become aware that they are individuals, cannot and will not
be contested.45 But these results just prove that the technique of reflec-
tion is very lately acquired by the child and the primitive man and that
they live iii their acts, directed towards their object; they may then be-
come also objects of their own acts.
Scheler's attitude towards the problem of self-consciousness is a
very inconsistent one. On the one hand he admits that any experience
pertains to a Self and that this Self is an individual Self which is pres-
ent in any of its experiences.46 Furthermore, he admits the possibility

44. Scheler makes that supposition rather incidentally and without more conclusive
proof in discussing the theory of the Person, EthziI4,p. 388 and p. 49. His statement in-
volves, of course, the abandonment of a basic principle of phenomenology, namnely,that any
kind of experience can be grasped by a reflective act. Cf. Husserl's Ideas, e. g., ??45, 78.
45. Cf. the summary of reasons for the infant's lack of self-consciousness.G. W. All-
port, Personality, p. 16 if.
46. Cf. above, pp. 333-334, and Syrnpathie,p. 284 f.
 SCHELER'S TiJEORY OF I NTERSUB3JECTIVJTY 34I

that man can grasp his own Self by inner perception. It is, of course,
the prerogative of the Person to grasp this Self which is always an
object and never the subject of such a perceiving activity.4 But as man
is also a Person he has the faculty of being a Self, whereas the animal
has consciousness without self-consciousness. It hears and sees with-
out knowledge that it does so .4 On the other hand, Scheler denies that
any intentional reflections toward acts are possible, as the Person and
his acts can never be objectified.49
The reasons for this strange conception are: (a) the inconsistency
in the notion of the Person. The origin of Scheler's idea of the Person
must be looked for in his philosophy of religion and ethics. Only sub-
sequently was the idea of the non-objectifiable Person of the deity and
the free subject of ethical acts put into the service of a half phenonm-
enological theory of cognition and merged with the concept of the
transcendental subjectivity. (b) A second reason lies in the artificial
distinction between mere "functions" belonging to the Self and "acts"
belonging to the person; (c) and thirdly, the necessity of maintaining
the concept of a supra-individual consciousness in order to build up
several of his theories in the field of sociology and philosophy of
history.50
But there is another reason which might have led the philosopher
to deny the possibility of grasping acts by reflection. Although lie no-
where refers to the following pIroblenl,it might have been at the root
of his concept.

V. THIE GENERAL THESIS OF THIE ALTER EGO AND ITS TIMTE STRUCTURE

ARWehave just characterized the two different attitudes: one of

living in our acts, being directed towards the objects of our acts; and
the other, the reflective attitude, by which wveturn to our acts, grasping
them by other acts. We have to glance now at the time-structure of
both attitudes. In adopting the first we live in our present and are
directed towards the immediate future which we anticipate by our ex-
pectations. These expectations-Husserl calls them, as the counter-
part of retentions, "protentions" `1-belong, of course, to our present
acting. They are elements of our present. although referring to the
immediate future. They pull the future, so to speak, continuously into

47. Cf. above p. 327 and Ethik, p. 404.

48. Cf. above pp. 325-326 and Stelluing des AMlenschen,p. 51.
49. Cf. above p. 327 and Et/uik,pp. 388, 401.
50. Especially in his "Probleme einer Soziologie des Wissens" in Die Wissensformen
und die Gesellschaft. Cf. Howard Becker's article in the present number of this journal.
51. E. g., Ideen, pi 77 f.
342 AN-DPHENO'MENOLOGICAL RESEARCH
PiHiILOSOPIHY

our present. This present, of course, is not a mere mathematical point

on the line of time. On the contrary, to borrow a term from James,"'
it is a specious present, and the great G. H. Mead has consecrated one
of his most excellent books-' to the study of its structure. Living in our
acts means living in our specious present or, as we may call it, in our
vivid present. But as we stated above, in living thus we are not aware
of our ego and of the stream of our thought. We cannot approach the
realm of our Self without an act of reflective turning. But what we
grasp by the reflective act is never the present of our stream of thought
and also not its specious present; it is always its past. Just now the
grasped experience pertained to my present, but in grasping it I know
it is not present any more. And, even if it continues, I am aware only
by an after-thought that my reflective turning towards its starting
phases has been simultaneous with its continuation. The whole present
therefore, and also the vivid present of our Self, is inaccessible for the
reflective attitude. We can only turn to the stream of our thought as if
it had stopped with the last grasped experience. In other words: Self-
consciousness can only be experienced tuiodopreterito, in the past tense.
Now let us go back again to the naive attitude of daily life in
which we live in our acts directed towards their objects. Among those
objects which we experience in the vivid present are other people's
behavior and thoughts. In listening to a lecturer, for instance, we seem
to participate immediately in the development of his stream of thought.
But-and this point is obviously a decisive one-our attitude in doing
so is quite different from that we adopt in turning to our own stream
of thought by reflection. \\re catch the other's thought in its vivid
presence and not niiodo preterito; that is, we catch it as a "N'now"and
not as a "Just now." The other's speech and our listening are experi-
enced as a vivid simultaneity.54 Now he starts a new sentence, he
attaches word to word; wvedo not know how the sentence will end, and
before its end we are uncertain what it means. The next sentence joins
the first, paragraph follows paragraph; now he has expressed a thought
and passes to another. and the whole is a lecture among other lectures
and so on. It depends on circumstances how far we want to follow the
development of his thought. But as long as w-e do so wveparticipate in
the immediate present of the other's thought.

52. Principles of Psychology, sol. I, ). 609.

53. The Philosophy of the Present, 1932.
54. We use the term "simultaneity" in the samie precise sense as Bcrgson in his hook,
Dziree et SinndltannItk, A propos de Ia tlhcoiie d'Einsten, Paris. 1923, ). 66: "I call simul-
taneous two fluxes which are for mxv consciousness either one or tsvo indifferently according
as my consciousness perceives thens together as one single flow if it pleases to give them one
undivided act of attention, or, on the other hand, distinguishes themn in their full length if
it prefers to divide its attention, hut without cutting them in two."
 SCHELER's THEORY OF INTERSUBJECTIVITY 343

The fact that I can grasp the other's stream of thought, and this
means the subjectivity of the alter ego in its vivid present,55 whereas I
cannot grasp my own self but by way of reflection in its past, leads us
to a definition of the alter ego: the alter ego is that subjective stream of
thought which can be experienced in its vivid present. In order to bring
it into view we do not have to stop fictitiously the other's stream of
thought nor need we transform its "Nows" into "Just Nows." It is
simultaneous with our own stream of consciousness, we share together
the same vivid present-in one word: we grow old together. The alter
ego therefore is that stream of consciousness whose activities I can
seize in their present by my own simultaneous activities.
This experience of the other's stream of consciousness in vivid
simultaneity I propose to call the general thesis of the alter ego's
existentce. It implies that this stream of thought which is not mine
shows the same fundamental structure as my own consciousness. This
means that the other is like me, capable of acting and thinking; that
his stream of thoughts show the same through and through connected-
ness as mine; that analogous to my own life of consciousness his shows
the same time-structure, together with the specific experiences of re-
tentions, reflections, protections, anticipations, connected therewith and
its phenomena of memory and attention, of kernel and horizon of the
thought, and all the modifications thereof. It means, furthermore, that
the other can live, as I do, either in his acts and thoughts, directed
towards their objects or turn to his own acting and thinking; that he
can experience his own Self only modo praeterito, but that he may look
at my stream of consciousness in a vivid present; that, consequently.
he has the genuine experience of growing old with me as I know that I
do with him.
As a potentiality each of us may go back into his past conscious
life as far as recollection goes, whereas our knowledge of the other
remains limited to that span of his life and its manifestations observed
by us. In this sense each of us knows more of himself than of the other.
But in a specific sense the contrary is true. In so far as each of 'us can
experience the other's thoughts and acts in the vivid present whereas
either can grasp his own only as a past by way of reflection, I know
more of the other and he knows more of me than either of us knows of
his own stream of consciousness. This present, common to both of us,
is the pure sphere of the "'We." And if we accept this definition, we can
agree with Scheler's tenet that the sphere of the "We" is pregiven to the

55. It is not necessaryto refer to an example of social interrelationshipbound to the

medium of speech. Whoever has played a game of tennis, performed chamber music, or
made love has caught-the other in his immediate vivid present.
344 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

sphere of the Self--although Scheler never had in mind the theory we

have just outlined. We participate, namely, without an act of reflection
in the vivid simultaneity of the "We," whereas the I appears only after
the reflective turning. And our theory also converges (to be sure, on
another level) with Scheler's statement that acts are not objectifiable
and that the other's acts can be experienced only by co-performing them.
For we cannot grasp our own acting in its actual present; we can seize
only those past of our acts which have already gone by; but we experi-
ence the other's acts in their vivid performance.
All that we have described as the "general thesis of the alter ego"
is a description of our experiences in the mundane sphere. It is a piece
of "phenomenological psychology," as Husserl calls it in antithesis to
"transcendental phenomenology."56 But the results of an analysis of
the mundane sphere, if true, cannot be impugned by any basic assump-
tion (metaphysical or ontological) which might be made in order to
explain our belief in the existence of others. Whether or not the origin
of the "We" refers to the transcendental sphere at all, our immediate
and genuine experience of the alter ego within the mundane sphere
cannot be gainsaid. In any event, however, the general thesis of the
alter ego, as outlined above, is a sufficient frame of reference for the
foundation of empirical psychology and social sciences. For all our
knowledge of the social world, even of its most anonymous and re-
motest phenomena and of the most diverse types of social communities
is based upon the possibility to experience an alter ego in vivid
presence.57

VI. THE PERCEPTION OF THE ALTER EGO

But is this experience of the alter ego a perception and, if so, an

inner perception, as Scheler pretends? This seems to be rather a
terminological question as Husserl has already pointed out.-3 If we do
not understand the term perception in the restricted meaning of "ade-
quate perception," that is, an originary, evidence-giving experience, but
just as the more or less well-founded belief of apperceiving a thing as
present, then we may call our experience of the other's thought a per-
ception. If I listen to somebody I perceive him as such; moreover, I
perceive him talking, proving, doubting, wanting, etc. And within the
same limits I can also say that I perceive his wrath, his suffering, etc.
But is such a perception an inner one? If wveaccept Husserl's definition

56. Husserl, Art., "Phenomenology," Encyclopaedia Britannica, 14th ed.

57. This has been outlined in my book: Der sianhafte Aufubattder socialen Welt,
Wien, 1932.
58. LogischleUMtersuchuingen,vol. II, p. 34 f.
 SCHELER'S THEORY OF INTERSUBJECTIVITY 345

that inner perception takes place, if the objects of the perception per-
tain to the same stream of experiences as the perceptions themselves,
then, of course, all our perceptions of the other's thoughts are outer or
transcendent perceptions. They are beliefs in the existence of their
objects, which are neither better nor worse founded than our belief in
the existence of all the other objects in the outer world. But if we accept
Scheler's definition that inner experience refers to all the objects of
psychical or mental life, then our experiences of other people's thought
might be by no worse a reason subsumed under the term of inner per-
ceptions. It seems that we have in a similar way as Scheler to distin-
guish between our experience of the existence of others, that is the
general thesis of the alter ego, and our knowledge of or about the
others' specific thoughts. The first, according to our theory, is really an
inner experience in the radical meaning of Husserl, as our Self partici-
pates likewise in the vivid simultaneity of the "Wie" which belongs
therefore to our stream of consciousness. To this extent at least the
"We" is always and from the beginning connected with the Self. But
our experience of other peoples' thoughts is a transcendent one, and our
belief in the existence of those thoughts, therefore, a principally
dubitable belief.
This, of course, does not mean, that our knowledge of the other's
existence, or even of his thoughts, refers immediately to the other's
psycho-physical existence and especially to the perceiving of his body.
Scheler is certainly right if he underlines again and again that the mere
existence of a frame of reference referring to the other, of a system of
interpretable signs or symbols, for instance, is sufficient for the belief
in the existence of other persons. Wiehave to add that also any produc-
tion and any tool, any work of art and any manufactured thing refers
to its producer. It is the frozen result of human activities and by repro-
ducing the acts which led to its existence, we always may win access to
other people's stream of thought without referring necessarily to other
people's bodies. We understand a symphony without thinking of the
composer's writing hand. Nevertheless, the function of the body is
most important for the knowledge of the other's thought.

VII. THE PROBLEM OF PERSPECTIVES RELATED TO INTERSUBJECTIVITY

Scheler has described many features of this function. The other's

body is to him first of all a field of expression. But there is nothing in
the world which would not have, under certain conditions, a certain
expressive value or, more correctly, to which we could not attribute
such a value. Anv great painter's still-life or landscape is an example.
For, to be a "field of expression" is not a quality- which would inhere
346 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

in the things. The world is given to us as an object of possible inter-

pretation. W\e might interpret it by attributing to it our own extro-
verted feelings. Expression is, then, our own feelings projected into
an object of the outer world.59
The chief function of the body, however, for the problem of under-
standing the alter ego is, according to Scheler, its role as the great selec-
tor and analyst of the contents of our inner and outer experiences. NVe
know from other writings of Scheler that this thought converges with
some well-known theories of Bergson and James and that it contains in
a nutshell the pragmatic theory of cognition afterwards developed by
him.60 It was not possible to embark within the frame of the present
paper upon a presentation and criticism of this interesting theory. But
another function of the body seems to be of the greatest importance for
the interpretation of the common life-world and the problem of the
alter ego. It was described by Husserl in his Meditations Cartesiennies 61
and as it leads to a new grouping of the problems connected with the
alter ego it may find its place here as a kind of conclusion. My own
body is for me the center of orientation in the spatio-temporal order of
the world. It alone is given to me as the center of the "Here," whereas
the other's body is given to me as being "There." This "There" is modi-
fiable by my own kinesthetic movements. The reason for the fact that
my own body can be interpreted like any other movable solid in space
lies in my faculty of transforming any "There" into a "Here" if I
change my position, e. g., by walking around. This implies that I may
perceive from "There" the same things as from "Here" but from an
angle which attaches to my being There. The Other, therefore, cannot
be identical with my self, as his body stays for him in the center of his
absolute "Here," whereas his "Here" remains for me always a "There."
I attribute to him the same perspectives which I should have if I we-re
not "Here," but "There," and vice versa. The objects of the outer
world perceived by both of us are the same but they appear to me in
the perspective "seen from Here" and to him in the perspective "seen
from There"; this means as they would appear to me if I transformed
my present "There" by my kinesthetic movements into a new "Here.'
This, it seems, Leibnitz also had in view when he says that any
monad mirrors the whole universe but under another perspective. And
in fact, the principle of perspectives developed by Husserl for the
problem of space has to be applied to the whole structural field of our

59. This, of course, is just one meaning of the most ambiguous term "expression."'
Cf. G. W. Allport, Personality,p. 464 ff.
60. "Erkenntnisund Arbeit" in Die Wissensformenund die Gesellsclhaft,1926.
61. L. c., ?53 f.
 SCHELER'S THEORY OF INTERSUBJECTIVITY 34/7

interconnected experiences. What wA-as pointed out for the perspectives

of the "Here" and "There" has to be worked out (although not imme-
diately referring to the body) in a further development of the general
thesis of the alter ego by analyses of the time-bound perspectives of
"Now" and "Then," the social perspectives of "We" and "They" and
the personal perspectives of familiarity and strangeness. Scheler's
theory of the alter ego is just a first step into this enormous field open
to phenomenological psychology. And only a careful investigation of
all the implications which the general thesis of the alter ego compre-
hends will bring us nearer to the solution of the enigma of how man
can understand his fellow-man. All empirical psychology and all social
sciences, however, take such a solution for granted.
ALFRED SCHUETZ.
NEW YORK CITY.